The Swimming Pool Season (23 page)

“So he asks for his dreams, then.”

“What dreams?”

“This dreaming and sleepwalking and so afraid of what life shall maybe bring.”

“I don't know. He doesn't talk about this to me.”

“You know he's breaking those legs in his sleep. Running away.”

“I didn't know . . .”

“From
life
, Larry. But he says to me, Nadia, Nadia, I can't do this for ever, run and run from all I'm not finding out. But who would teach him? Not his niece, I know.
I
would teach him. I would say okay you go on a journey but you go with Nadia. Nadia has seen persecutions and deprivations and is not being afraid. I want to say I love you, my dear Hervé, and all with love is so possible. But now he never learns, you know. He goes on his journey away, always running, always dreaming and taking with him some silver box to caress. What is in this bloody box? Not warm kindness, not some touching hand, not any passion . . .”

She is near to tears but for once fights them back. She drinks a deep glass of wine, wipes her lips with a fretful little hand.

“He is so stupid,” she says at last, “to think life is lasting for ever. I don't know how old he is. Fifty. Maybe fifty-two. Not so young to imagine he can waste so many years, staying so safe, never seeing outside his nose or what. You don't think this is waste?”

“It's what he wants.”

The wine, the
gulashnova
, the chocolate nuts, filled with these and with a tender pity for Nadia, Larry staggers through the silent darkness to his house. He lies in his cold bed and tries to think up enough inventions to make himself drowsy. He finds himself remembering Thomas's Monarch bean bags. In his mind, Thomas sits sprawled in one of these, staring accusingly at him. Somewhere behind his son, in shadow, is Miriam. The looks on these faces say, you're about to betray us.

“Larry covers his face. More than with the meal, more than with pity for Nadia, Larry now aches with the new thoughts about Agnès which Nadia has planted in his mind, and which the vain pursuit of inventions and even the near presence of Thomas and Miriam can't seem to chase away. He feels invaded. He longs for the morning, hoping that in the sensible light of a grey autumn day the invader will return to the shadowy place it came from and cease to bother him. But in the dark his mind reconstructs. Conversations. Little sly smiles. The sweet kindness she gives. And Nadia's laughter at what she called his English innocence. He wraps his poor frenzied head with a bandage of uncertainty. Sleep tilts way out of sight. The trees hiss as the wind gets up. Mice fidget in the floorspace above his head. The night seems to scratch itself.

He dozes and is woken by Gervaise crooning to the cows. It's still dark. In darkness these mornings Gervaise puts on her old coat and leaves her men sleeping. The wind is stronger now, carrying bits of her song away. Larry looks for the invader and feels it planted boldly inside him, its presence in his head more firmly established. Again, he covers his face. He's glad Miriam is away and can't see him cowering like this. And with a surge of loneliness he remembers his wife – her hair on the pillow, her breathing, her hand touching his neck. He's survived her absence, but now, to save him from his new and treacherous thoughts, he plaintively calls her back.

He remembers – as if it was something done by someone else, not him – the night years ago when he got in his car to drive halfway across England to join Susan, the pert, dark haired girl who had worked for him at
Aquazure
and become his mistress. Half-an-hour out of Miriam's life and he'd known he wasn't capable of leaving her. Not for this girl. Not for anyone. He and the car, a Renault 16, journeyed in circles round Oxfordshire till dawn came. They were of one mind. He couldn't leave. The car wouldn't take him. They cruised, happy as homebound fliers, towards the sunrise. Courteous, they let Miriam sleep, and took themselves to breakfast at a Post House. Larry had bacon and mushrooms and coffee, the car was given a pint of oil and eight gallons of 4-star. They sang home, the engine making poetry of the miles. And Miriam took them in.

Larry sleeps again and is woken by the post van turning round by Gervaise's yard. There's a hint of sun beyond the curtains. He feels quite calm in his certainly that downstairs is a letter from Miriam. He hears children playing on his earthmound. These days, his life is cornered by trespassers. He longs for Miriam's familiar, calming prose.

Dear Larry
, he reads,

Each time we talk on the telephone we seem to say hurtful things, or misunderstand each other, so I thought it was better to write to you, even though the post from here to Pomerac takes ages, as we know
.

I hope you're all right. I hope you don't feel too lonely. I'm sure you will be seeing a lot of Hervé and Nadia. Perhaps Madame de la Brosse even invites you up for dinner? And now you have the pool to occupy you. This is good news of course and I hope it is the beginning of a new start for you in France. Please write and tell me how it's all going
.

I'm working very hard now for the exhibition. I would suggest you came over for it, but I know if you do, you'll want me to come back to Pomerac with you afterwards and part of the reason I'm writing is to tell you that I don't think I can come back yet. All my instincts tell me to stay in England, to
make
something of my time here, so that when I do come back I can do so joyfully and with energy for your new pool company, and so on. I think, after the Aquazure fiasco, I was your nurse for too long and I hope you will understand and not think me selfish if I take some time away from you – for myself. We've never, you and I, been a part for any length of time, and I don't suppose, without the S.O.S. from Leni, I would have thought of leaving. But now that I'm here in Oxford, I feel it must be right to stay – not for ever, of course, only until I've rediscovered some purpose in myself, outside of you, outside of Thomas, outside of Leni. Then we might be able to make the kind of new start Pomerac was meant to be and yet never really was. I felt too tired. Too worried about you. Too anxious that you'd repeat the Aquazure mistakes in France. Perhaps I'm being bossy or presumptuous when I suggest it may be a good thing for you, too, to be on your own for a while. You can ask yourself, as I keep asking, what can we make of the next years, the years when we shall gradually be old? Is Pomerac right for us or will we feel too lonely, too much the exiles? I don't know the answers to these questions yet, but I feel determined to find them and not let our lives drift into bitterness or regret
.

This all sounds very high-handed, very preposterous. Forgive me for this. I find it hard to express what I feel
.

Now for some news: Thomas was here for a while, but can't leave the business for long. He seems happy in his life and I think he may get married to Perdita. I love him deeply, the more because he is such fun to be with these days
.

Leni is still in hospital after breaking her ankle on the landing. They're going to keep her there till she can walk with crutches. In herself, she seems much better. I don't know if this is some lull before the real storm, or if she has recovered. It's lovely and peaceful here without her, anyway! I've turned David's attic into a studio and sleep in my old room, the little room next to Leni's. Nothing disturbs me in these two places
.

It's getting very cold here in Oxford. The students are all wrapped up in their scarves. I hate the thought of winter and Christmas in particular. I wish the seasons, along with everything else, would stop changing
.

With my loving thoughts
.

The sadness Larry feels after reading this letter has perhaps less to do with Miriam's delayed return (he predicted this, after all) than with his awareness that his wife – in all her actions – from the simple choosing of furnishing or clothes through to her loving forgiveness of unfaithfulness and failure – has tended to be right and admirable, whereas he has tended to be clumsy and base. Must she be wise till they die? Will he, dying before her, croak out yet one more, yet one last apology before putting her to the inconvenience and expense of burying him at Ste. Catherine? Briefly, he envies men who have married women in whom, beauty aside or notwithstanding, there's nothing to admire. All these years, he's tried to live up to Miriam and still he's found wanting. He's nearer than he's ever been to understanding Harve's misogamy. Only his armoured ancestors reproach Harve with their clunking weight of bravery and renown. For the rest, he is what he is – himself. No one reproaches him. No one saves him from his plummet down the stairs. He's the doctor after all and heals himself.

Larry folds the letter and puts it tidily back into its envelope. He then sticks the envelope among the books, just shoving it in where he will forget it. Let Miriam be right once more. Let her profit from her time without him. But she mustn't imagine, because she's chosen to set him aside, that he'll cease to exist.

On this windy day, with the last chestnut leaves flying, Xavier Mallélou arrives in Pomerac. He gets a lift from the Thiviers train as far as Ste. Catherine. He doesn't stop to glance at the graves or at the children in the schoolyard where he learned clapping songs and the spongy feel of girls' thighs under their overalls and the art of swopping and dodging and lying. He walks the familiar walk along the Ste. Catherine road, past the sewage plant, past fields of the de la Brosse vines, past the sandy track that once led to the pike river and up the stony road to Pomerac on its hill.

He carries a plastic suitcase, bound with string like a parcel. He feels shame for this broken case and shame for this melancholy, droop-shouldered self sidling home to his mother. In the wind slapping his face, he feels like crying. He's full of trouble. The dogs sit and bark at him as he comes into Pomerac. He hurries past the Maréchal's door, dreading the old man's stare:
Xavier? Is it? What's happened to you, boy
? He's in the lane leading to the cowshed, the lane which skirts Larry's boundary. He turns a blank face to the yellow crater and the vast heaps of mud and imagines fretfully a tall building going up and dwarfing Gervaise's house. Fear for his unannounced homecoming mixes with a more cruel fear of unexpected change. In Xavier's mind, not one stone is turned, not one bough is felled in Pomerac except in obedience to the seasons. In the city, businesses opened, prospered, fell back, went bankrupt, closed. Signs came and went. Everything moved, shifted, altered, stopped and started, as if pushed by perpetual tides. But here in Pomerac you heard the quiet of the land. Even dawn and dusk came slowly. Light or darkness didn't overtake you. You had time to cross the field and close the gate and take off your boots after the moon was up . . .

Xavier is resting the broken suitcase, and still staring at a row of white lengths of pipe stacked by the pit, when Gervaise comes out of the milking barn, pushing a handcart of muck, and sees her son. What she sees first are his troubled eyes. She runs in her torn working coat calling, calling his name, her fists tight with her protecting love, and flings her hard chest against him and circles him with her grateful arms. “Xavier! Xavier! Oh this is something! This is
something
!”

He can smell the farm on her, the milk, the cowshit, the earth. From a perfume counter he's brought her toilet-water and soap, to make her smell like a woman. He chokes with love for her. So brave she seems in her headscarf and rubber boots. He knows in that instant that he and his brother, Philippe, have none of this bravery. Gervaise has always humbled him and here was his principal reason for escaping her and her timeless landscape. Though he towers over her, he feels small.

She doesn't ask why he's come. She pulls back and stares at him. Under his eye is a blemish of raw skin, an eczema he rubs and fidgets with. She touches this sore place and he winces.

“Don't touch it, Maman.”

“You're not ill, Xavier?”

“No.”

“You're skinny. Mallélou said you were skinny.”

“Well, I used to eat okay, but now . . .”

“I'll take care of you.”

“It's cold . . .”

She feels him shivering. She feels the sobbing he keeps buried in his ribcage. Her boy. Her baby. Beautiful from the day they tugged him from her.

“Oh Xavier . . .”

“It's cold, eh, Maman?”

“Well, it's November.”

“I remembered your birthday. I got something . . .”

“Come in and get warm. It's warm by the fire. Then we'll see to a room.”

She picks up the tied-together suitcase. Where they turn in to the yard the wind drops suddenly and the noisy hens and guineafowl peck as idly as on a June morning. Xavier stares. In their midst, plumper even than the birds, is a bright-fleshed, golden-haired man he has never seen. In his huge hands is a basket of eggs and his body is draped in a rain-cape. He sees Gervaise and Xavier and smiles. All maliciousness seems absent from his face. Behind him, Xavier senses his mother hesitate before she tells him quietly, “This is Klaus, Xavier. Klaus lives with us now.”

Immediately, Xavier's mind accuses this man of beginning, next door, the building that will blot out this farm. When he holds a hand out to shake his, his look is uneasy.

The little room Xavier had here as a boy is used by Mallélou now. On one of its walls is a faded poster of Jean-Claude Killy, the skier, put up by Xavier when, in the hot snows of adolescence, he had dreams of mountains and fame. Mallélou likes the poster, yellowy though it is. It reminds him not only of his son but of the grace and daring the human body is capable of expressing in certain seasons of his mind. He sleeps facing it, his back to the room, his back to the barnyard noises.